THE BITTERN. 275 
had been shot dead, uttering at the moment of each 
dive a loud guawk. While I was still engaged in 
watching his manceuvres, he was answered, and a 
second Bittern came floating through the darksome air, 
and joined his companion. Another and another fol- 
lowed, and within ten or twelve minutes, there must 
have been from fifteen to twenty of these large birds all 
gamboling and disporting themselves together, circling 
round one another in their gyratory flight, and making 
the night any thing, certainly, but melodious by their 
clamors. What was the meaning of those strange noc- 
turnal movements I cannot so much as guess ; it was not 
carly enough in the spring to be connected in any way 
with the amatory propensities of the birds, or I should 
have certainly set it down, like the peculiar flight, the 
unusual chatter, and the drumming, performed with 
the quill-feathers, of the American Snipe—Scolopau 
Wilsonti—commonly known as the English snipe, dur- 
ing the breeding season, as a preliminary to incubation, 
nidification, and the reproduction of the species—in a 
word, as a sort of bird courtship. The season of the 
year put a stopper on that interpretation, and I can con- 
ceive none other than that the Quawks were indulging 
themselves in an innocent game of romps, preparatory 
to the more serious and solemn enjoyment of a fish and 
frog supper. : ; 
The Bittern, it appears, on the Severn river, emptying 
into Hudson’s Bay, makes its nest in the long grass of 
